Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D'Urbervilles.pdf - Bookstacks

TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 15 THOMAS HARDY
spoke two languages: the dialect at home, more or less; ordinary English abroad
and to persons of quality.)
“Since I’ve been away?” Tess asked.
“Ay!”
“Had it anything to do with father’s making such a mommet of himself in
thik carriage this afternoon? Why did ‘er? I felt inclined to sink into the ground
with shame!”
“That wer all a part of the larry! We’ve been found to be the greatest
gentlefolk in the whole county—reaching all back long before Oliver Grumble’s
time—to the days of the Pagan Turks—with monuments, and vaults, and crests,
and ‘scutcheons, and the Lord knows what all. In Saint Charles’s days we was
made Knights o’ the Royal Oak, our real name being d’Urberville! ... Don’t that
make your bosom plim? ‘Twas on this account that your father rode home in the
vlee; not because he’d been drinking, as people supposed.”
“I’m glad of that. Will it do us any good, mother?”
“O yes! ‘Tis thoughted that great things may come o’t. No doubt a mampus
of volk of our own rank will be down here in their carriages as soon as ‘tis known.
Your father learnt it on his way hwome from Shaston, and he has been telling me
the whole pedigree of the matter.”
“Where is father now?” asked Tess suddenly.
Her mother gave irrelevant information by way of answer: “He called to see
the doctor to-day in Shaston. It is not consumption at all, it seems. It is fat round
his heart, ‘a says. There, it is like this.” Joan Durbeyfield, as she spoke, curved a
sodden thumb and forefinger to the shape of the letter C, and used the other
forefinger as a pointer. “‘At the present moment,’ he says to your father, ‘your
heart is enclosed all round there, and all round there; this space is still open,’ ‘a
says. ‘As soon as it do meet, so,’“—Mrs Durbeyfield closed her fingers into a circle
complete—“‘off you will go like a shadder, Mr Durbeyfield,’ ‘a says. ‘You mid last
ten years; you mid go off in ten months, or ten days.’“
Tess looked alarmed. Her father possibly to go behind the eternal cloud so
soon, notwithstanding this sudden greatness!
“But where is father?” she asked again.
Her mother put on a deprecating look. “Now don’t you be bursting out
angry! The poor man—he felt so rafted after his uplifting by the pa’son’s news—
that he went up to Rolliver’s half an hour ago. He do want to get up his strength
for his journey to-morrow with that load of beehives, which must be delivered,
family or no. He’ll have to start shortly after twelve to-night, as the distance is so
long.”
“Get up his strength!” said Tess impetuously, the tears welling to her eyes.
“O my God! Go to a public-house to get up his strength! And you as well agreed as
he, mother!”